Longman Dictionary of

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only later on acquire a second one which they consider their native language.
Sometimes, this term is used synonymously with FIRST LANGUAGE.
native speaker n
a person who learns a language as a child and continues to use it fluently
as a dominant language. Native speakers are said to use a language grammatically,
fluently and appropriately, to identify with a community where
it is spoken, and to have clear intuitions about what is considered grammatical
or ungrammatical in the language. One of the goals of linguistics
is to account for the intuitions the native speaker has about his/her language.
Dictionaries, reference grammars and grammatical descriptions
are usually based on the language use of the native speaker of a dominant
or standard variety. In some contexts (the teaching of some languages in
some countries) it is taken as a basic assumption that the goal of learning
a second or foreign language is to approximate as closely as possible to
the standards set by native speakers; in other teaching and learning contexts,
this assumption is increasingly being questioned and native speakers
no longer have the privileged status they used to have.
nativism n
the view that the ability of humans to learn language builds upon an
innate faculty of language (see INNATENESS HYPOTHESIS) which includes
innate ideas. Two types of nativism can be identified: special nativism
(also specific nativism), which posits that linguistic concepts (such as the
notions of sentence, noun phrase, verb) are part of innate knowledge, and
general nativism, the view that linguistic categories and principles of language
are constructed from biologically determined structures and principles
that are not specifically linguistic in character.
nativist position n
another term for INNATIST HYPOTHESIS
nativization
nativization n nativize v
also indigenization
1 the adaptation a language may undergo when it is used in a different
cultural and social situation. English in India, for example, is said to
have undergone nativization because changes have occurred in aspects
of its phonology, vocabulary, grammar, etc., so that it is now recognized
as a distinct variety of English – Indian English
2 the process by which a borrowed word loses pronunciation features of
the source language and assimilates to the pronunciation patterns of
the borrowing language
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